


Red and Gold

by hailtotheheroes



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Mythology, Angst, Demigod Damen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Romance, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-13
Packaged: 2020-01-07 00:51:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18399782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hailtotheheroes/pseuds/hailtotheheroes
Summary: After numerous miscarriages Queen Egeria makes a deal with the Gods. She will have a child, blessed by each of them, who will survive to be the greatest hero there ever was. And in return she will die.And then Damianos of Akielos is born; a legendary prince, divine yet not, who falls in love with a mortal prince in a far away land.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! So, this fic was actually influenced very heavily by a post of tumblr by the lovely king--smaurent. You can find it here: http://king-smaurent.tumblr.com/post/178591220991
> 
> Enjoy!

Egeria was a queen. She’d grown up a princess in warm lands, warmer than the golden fields of Ios, waiting for her eventual marriage with a light heart and childish anticipation. Eventually the day had come: Egeria had married Theomedes, kind and strong and handsome Theomedes, who’d been many years her senior at the time. He was a peculiar man: childish yet charismatic, light yet severe, definitely different from what she’d been expecting back in her own lands. Egeria had never known that she was to become the queen of a foreign land, the wife of a great man, yet there she was.

Despite the difference in age and demeanor and culture they eventually fell in love. Not love of the flesh but love of the mind, born not out of lust but friendship and respect and regard. Egeria loved Theomedes, she really did, and he loved her in turn. He did not mind her free soul and she his other pursuits of the flesh as, ultimately, they both ended up right back to each other, back in bed and mind and soul. She learned that love was best lived that way, when it was filled with individual acceptance and joy. She learned, eventually, to love Ios’ untamable winds, its people and lands. All she wanted, now, was to give back to the man and kingdom she had grown to love so much: give them a prince, an heir, to make sure they would remain eternal.

The first time she’d gotten pregnant she’d been but a child herself, in the second year of her marriage. She remembered telling Theomedes and their shared joy, so bubbly and sweet. She’d carried that child two short months before pain had hit her like never before, so great and strong and feral she’d felt as though she were being torn apart. Then had come the trembling and sweating, and then eventually the blood, trickling down her legs with deplorable ease. It had taken her two days to pass the child, two weeks to recover from the fever. She’d felt death for the first time then, lying in her bed, Theomedes at her side, as she shook and wept and vomited and slept only to do it all over again. She would have welcomed death.

And then suddenly it was gone. She was alive, and she would live. For a while Theomedes and she were both wary, the memory of a lost child and her near brush with death still too fresh for comfort, but eventually everything was back to the way it should be. If Theomedes was worried that she wasn’t getting with child, even after the length of a few years, he wasn’t showing it.

And then she did. She was more careful this time with how she moved, how she ate, how she breathed. She went to the temple every day, praying to the goddess for a healthy child, for a delivery on time. Not easy, not painless, just enough to let a child live and thrive.

That one she carried for longer, almost five months, before the same cycle repeated all over again. It took her longer to recover then, brought down both by older age and older grief. It took them longer to be together again the way they’d been before, as two people who completed each other, couldn’t do without each other. Egeria was weary and Theomedes tired.

She hadn’t thought much of it at all that he wasn’t coming to her at night anymore, that he was always out too early and in too late. Eventually, though, Hypermenestra was with child. She was a nice woman with a good, kind soul; Egeria had liked her perhaps best out of all Theomedes’ harem, but she couldn’t tell whether that was better or not. For the months leading to the birth she didn’t meet Hypermenestra, not once, didn’t meet Theomedes outside of duty against all his pleas and wishes.

And then Hypermenestra had a son. Theomedes named him Kastor, in hopes that he’d be shining just as brightly as his name dictated.  Egeria wept. She didn’t know for how long and why, just that there was this indescribable fury and grief consuming her, killing her slowly. She hated herself for not being strong enough to have mothered Theomedes’ first child and him for having it with someone else, blamed Hypermenestra for being more of a woman then she and Kastor for being alive where her two children, dead for so long now, had never tasted life. She hoped, relentlessly and constantly, for death to claim her before she could be humiliated further, before her hatred could have her stoop lower.

And then, again, it was gone. Theomedes was off to war and Egeria now in charge, exposing her involuntarily to life no matter how she wished to desert it. She enjoyed it, too, the feeling of control finally hers now, after feeling useless and powerless for so long.

Hypermenestra came to her then. Kastor was still little more than a newly born babe, incapable yet even of crawling. Hypermenestra had wrapped him in a red bundle, embroidered at the edges with gold, the silent declaration that she was carrying royalty. There was, however, no lion pin holding the cloth in one place, only a golden circlet to bring together its two ends, purely for convenience and not for stature. Kastor wasn’t, and never would be, the legitimate crown prince of Akielos. Egeria stared at him now, tiny and wriggling in his mother’s arms, and thought about fate: how, perhaps in another life, his life would have been so much different, how feeble the balances of destiny were, how fickle.

“Hello,” she said weakly to Hypermenestra, staring still at Kastor’s small frame. She hadn’t meant to sound so meek, hadn’t meant to reflect her foreignness to being on the throne after so long, her tiredness of being alone.

“Hello,” Hypermenestra said in return, smiling in a secretive, warm way that Egeria couldn’t quite understand. “Exalted Theomedes would have an audience with Kastor every week today, Exalted Queen,” she said, “he just wouldn’t lie still whatever I did, it is almost as though he knows what time it is.” She chuckled lightly and mumbled something incoherent under her breath to Kastor, who let out a sigh and giggles in response.

For a moment Egeria felt the telltale signs of anger. Hypermenestra must be trying to rub it in, she thought, trying to assert her dominance now that Theomedes was gone. She had a son, Egeria didn’t.

“Would you like to hold him?” she heard Hypermenestra ask. “He likes to be held, silly child, he’ll never let me put him down.”

Before she responded Hypermenestra moved forward. She gently laid Kastor on Egeria’s lap, shifting her arms so his head would be supported. “There,” she said, radiant with the aura of a woman now accomplished, “He might pull on your hair, Exalted.”

Egeria stared at Kastor, so small and helpless and worriless. There was something stuck in her throat, a sob or a scream, at seeing him alive and well and so utterly perfect, something she’d been holding in since the loss of her first child. The loneliness, the grief, the anguish and anger and excruciating hope all came back to her in one final, intoxicating moment, crushing her in an exquisitely painful lurch from the inside. She felt like she was burning, suffocating, freezing, screaming, all at the same time, relentlessly.

“He likes you,” Hypermenestra said, “You calm him, I think.”

She looked up at her now, at her face, full of nothing but genuine kindness. She looked back at Kastor, so innocent, so beautiful, his only fault not being hers. Her eyes were burning.

“It is hard to lose a child. I never have, I cannot imagine it. I am sorry for your loss.” Hypermenestra was searching her face, trying to understand whether she’d gone too far, realizing no doubt in that second the difference between them: that Egeria was queen and she was not. Egeria looked at her quizzically, like she wasn’t sure what she was doing quite exactly, and whispered an almost inaudible “thank you,” before she dipped her head back down at Kastor.

“He is beautiful,” she heard herself say. “He is Theo’s son.” At that Hypermenestra smiled.

“Yes, Exalted,” she said, “he is both.”

Looking at her now Egeria could see love in her eyes, both for her boy and Theomedes. Hypermenestra was younger than herself, slightly older than she had been when she’d come to these foreign lands, to a foreign man. So young, yet Egeria could see the wisdom in her eyes, too.

“You love Theo,” she pointed out, “and he loves you, too.” It was as though something had overcome her, like she wasn’t the one deciding what came out of her mouth now; her honesty so pure, so naked, so true, finally free.

“He loves you, too.” Hypermenestra affirmed, smiling at her as though she wasn’t a queen or married to the man she loved, as though they were friends, confidantes. He gestured at Kastor with her head, Kastor who was dizzy with the onslaught of sleep, getting progressively more still by the second.

“You would love him, too, I think.”

Would she? Kastor wasn’t the children she’d lost. Kastor was the source of her humiliation, the face of her defeat, the proof of her inaptitude. He was the son of Hypermenestra, lower born then herself, a mistress, younger and more inferior to her, yet so much more of a woman than she was. Kastor was pain, he was regret, shame, grief.

He was also Theomedes’ son, she reminded herself. Her Theomedes, her husband, caring and sweet with his gentle hands, quick with his mind, aloof in his charm. Kastor was his son, Hypermenestra was his woman. So was she.

One tear slid down her cheek as she started rocking Kastor, now so drowsy with sleep he was barely keeping his eyes open.

“It is difficult to love him,” she said, and she did not know whether she meant Kastor or Theomedes or both, just that she had resigned, now, to the hardships of love.

“I know,” Hypermenestra replied, “I know it is.” There was a hand on her shoulder and suddenly she did not feel so alone anymore.

That was the start of their unlikely friendship, the talk of everyone in the palace. Egeria, queen, humiliated by her inability to have children; and Hypermenestra, a dishonorable mistress to the king, breathing the same air and laughing together. They got closer and closer when Theomedes was away at war, learned to love each other for each other and not for the sake of duty or Theomedes. Egeria saw a younger sister in Hypermenestra and she a confidante in her, both women now freed of their isolation and solitude within the palace walls. Kastor steadily grew, learned first to walk and then to run and talk. He was their joy, both of them at the same time, no matter how bitter they both were about their own circumstances.

“Hurry up, Nestra, or you’ll miss his entrance!” Egeria shouted at Hypermenestra as they ran breathlessly through the corridors, trying to catch Theomedes at the gates when he returned from his tour. He climbed the long stairs -exactly a hundred, Egeria thought, one for every ancient hero- and faced them both at the gates with surprise on his face and tension in his shoulders. He kissed Egeria’s hand first and then Hypermenestra’s before smiling and asking about Kastor, bearing barely concealed shock and pride in his eyes. That night they both told him about his boy while he lied in bed, exhausted from war, and everything in their world became fine again.

It was years later, seven perhaps or maybe more, when Egeria got pregnant again. She was elated and confused at the same time, both because she knew she was past her prime time and because she hadn’t thought of it in so long. Kastor had grown now to be a boy of joy and energy and, somehow, she’d forgotten somewhere along the way that he wasn’t hers, that he’d never be allowed to wear the golden lion on his chiton. When she told Hypermenestra she was overjoyed, Theomedes mute with surprise, and both perhaps equally scared for her in their silence.

That one was the worst for Egeria. She carried that child, her baby boy, for nearly eight months before labor found her prematurely. It was worse than any pain she’d felt before, any miscarriage or fever or loss, to see her child so tiny yet lifeless right before her eyes. She never got to hold him. Immediately after she saw his unmoving body a scream tore out of her for the child she’d grown and nurtured, hers and Theo’s and all of Akielos’, now dead because of her. She lost consciousness then and didn’t regain it properly for days, going in and out of it for weeks before she woke up, one final time, with Hypermenestra at her side. Immediately when she looked at her Egeria knew it hadn’t been a dream, that there was no point in feeling for the comforting swell of her belly she had had for months, before her child had been ripped from her womb too early. She tried to look for the grief but there was nothing. There was nothing but a void, nothing but nothingness.

Egeria was a queen. A childless queen, lowly and cursed in her existence. She was a queen from foreign lands, where there was still magic and spirits and honor for them, and she had nothing to lose now. Theomedes and Hypermenestra had each other and they both had Kastor, an Akielon prince no matter the consequences, and Egeria had all of them to call family, too. But she was done, now, done letting herself get blinded in her love, done not feeling the aching void in her, begging and asking and pleading for a child, for _one_ child, to finally survive.

“We will go to the temple, Nestra,” she said with tentative authority, “Tell the priestesses to ready a sacrifice.”

Hypermenestra had thought, in that one moment of bliss, that the sacrifice was to thank the goddess for Egeria’s unlikely recovery. Yet it was not.

She went to the temple and lit the incense, telling the priestesses that the queen had seen a sacrifice fit today and to prepare for it. The priestesses did not like her but their love for the queen was well known; Egeria was famous for her piety, her ease with the old ways of prayer. When Egeria got there, she was in white and gold, a tiny diadem of laurels shining on her head, looking beautiful and ghostly at the same time. It scared Hypermenestra to see her, so pale now after weeks of sickness and left so thin, dressed like she was attending a funeral.

The sacrifice was readied. A dead boar was brought out, along with countless jugs of wine and oil and grapes and figs, all set in shining urns and plates of gold. In front of the goddess’ statue there was a small fountain, set inside the carving of a laurel crown, that supplied water to a thin, overflowing waterway carved into exquisite pink marble. Hypermenestra watched as Egeria poured jug after jug after jug of wine into it, while it kept overflowing with the red momentarily replaced by clear water again, while Egeria’ white dress got stained with it as though she were bleeding. She was talking in a language Hypermenestra did not know; an ancient one, she realized, that had belonged to the ancient lands. She looked on in stunned silence as Egeria produced a golden knife and cut the boar’s throat with it, let the blood flow into a deep golden bowl shining with suspicious light, and poured it into the waterway as she had done everything before it. The water was stained red, a deep red Hypermenestra couldn’t quite comprehend, and she shivered while waiting for it to be washed away by the fresh currents of water.

Except it didn’t. The red kept spreading, first in the waterway and then the marble and fountain and statue, until all Hypermenestra saw was red. Egeria’s chanting was louder now, faster, with a feral grace that hadn’t been there before, when suddenly Hypermenestra became aware that they were not praying anymore. Terror filled her and immediately after came an inexplicable urge to grab Egeria and pull her away from the shrine, to take her away and out of the temple and push her into the safe arms of Theomedes, to protect her from whatever she was summoning now in front of her very eyes.

She found that she couldn’t move. She was rooted there, held in place by an invisible force, some kind of wind that was pushing her endlessly down. The sounds got louder, both Egeria’s voice and the dripping of water, as her sight got progressively redder and blurrier and lighter all at once. There was a sudden moment when she felt it all stop. She looked at Egeria, kneeling now, dressed in her ruined, stained gown almost entirely crimson. She found she couldn’t fathom why she was on one knee but also that she was replicating the very same posture, unable to grasp ahold of time and space until Egeria spoke, sounding not like herself but an old, dead, gone spirit, not even of this world.

“My lady,” she said, “you have graced me.”

Only then did Hypermenestra gather the courage to look at the shrine, where the scarlet statue had disappeared and given way to a living, breathing woman, the most beautiful one Hypermenestra had ever seen. Her skin was white, so white she looked like she had no blood circulating in her, her eyes changing color from yellow to blue to green every time she blinked, her hair red as a flame. She was breathtaking. She was terrifying. She was divine.

“You have summoned me, daughter of the Achaeans,” she said, “not many could have.”

Egeria remained silent, on one knee, not looking ahead at the woman but at the ground, now also crimson with an ethereal glow.

“Hera,” rose a whisper out of Hypermenestra, as though she was in a trance. The goddess looked at her dismissively, as though she was part of the ground herself, and for a minute Hypermenestra wished she was.

“You wish for a child,” Hera said, “a child of the gods, to grow in your womb and walk here on the earth.” It was not a question, it was simply a statement. Hypermenestra realized she was trembling.

“Yes,” Egeria replied, “one that would please you, one that would be the prince of this land, your land.”

Suddenly the temperature in the room increased, the air thickened, the ground shook. Hera had taken a step forward. And then another, another and another, until she was standing right before Egeria, still not looking up.

“You are a mortal. You will not survive the birth of a child of ours.” She didn’t say it as a warning, yet it had the aura of one, as though it was the last escape before an inevitable end.

“Yes,” Egeria said, “I will not. But he will thrive. He will be a hero, the greatest one yet.”

Hypermenestra shivered.

“Very well,” Hera said, “very well. You will serve us, Queen Egeria of Akielos, to bring to life our child on earth.”

Hypermenestra thought she heard a scream. Yet when she looked at Hera and Egeria all she could see was that they were both standing now, Hera touching Egeria with one outstretched finger, long and slender. Her mouth wasn’t moving but Hypermenestra could hear chanting, more ancient than Egeria’s, louder than anything she had heard, stronger than an all-consuming fire.

And all at once it was gone, in a single blink. The marble was its usual shining pink, the water flowing with its usual clarity, the sacrifice now vanished right before their eyes. She became aware that she could move and scrambled over to Egeria’s side, her limbs feeling foreign and worn. Egeria was standing, looking at the Goddess’ statue, reciting a prayer. Hypermenestra noticed that her dress had turned back into white, her hands had cleared of blood, her face gained a newfound radiance that she hadn’t had before. She looked plumper, healthier, more beautiful. As Hypermenestra stared at her friend her eyes became fixed on one spot, on Egeria’s left breast, right below her collarbone, where there was now the burnt crest of a lion’s head. Where Hera had touched her, she realized, horrified in that single second. She watched as the mark disappeared, replaced by smooth skin, as if it had never been there at all.

Egeria turned to her. “You will not tell Theo,” she said to her, “Please, Nestra, you can’t tell him, you cannot tell him.” And that was when Hypermenestra realized she was crying. She held Egeria as she cried, still in shock herself, and thought about what she’d just done. What they’d just witnessed.

She did not tell Theomedes. That night Egeria went to Theomedes’ room, dressed in red silk and wearing her golden crown, regal like a goddess herself. Hypermenestra knew they’d be blessed with a son that very night.

As promised by the heavens to Egeria, she fell pregnant. Theomedes was not ecstatic this time, only terrified for her health, when it was still so soon after her last loss. His worries slowly faded, however, as he basked in Egeria’s new glow and saw her God-given health. It was almost like whatever the gods had granted their child, whatever divine protection and power he now had, he was sharing with his mother to make her younger, livelier, lovelier. _Just until it is born_ , Hypermenestra thought, _and then it will kill her._

The months passed anticlimactically. Egeria was in more pain than the regular mother, perhaps because her child kicked with godly strength or maybe because it was draining her life energy, just like the gods had promised. She didn’t show it though, not to anyone but Hypermenestra, who she’d hug sometimes while sobbing her heart out, repeating over and over “I’m scared, I’m scared, I’m scared,” as she shook uncontrollably in her arms. And Hypermenestra held her, kept her curse of a secret, until the fateful day came.

It started like any birth. It was midnight and slaves came to get Hypermenestra out of her chambers, telling her the queen had summoned her. And Hypermenestra went to Egeria’s side, Egeria who was so happy she was giggling in the first hours of birth, giddy with joy and anticipation. That soon changed. It was an almost tangible shift when Egeria stopped laughing and started screaming, screams like Hypermenestra had never heard before, not during birth or death. It was like she had been taken over by something, chanting her ancient language in the middle of every scream, continuing suit after that, like she was two people at the same time. And blood, too, so much blood. Hypermenestra had never seen so much blood. Not just from birth but trickling down Egeria’s nose, ears, coming out of her mouth in between coughs, as though her very body was collapsing. There was so much blood that Hypermenestra knew it was godly intervention: blood supplemented to her just long enough to keep her alive, for the child to be delivered safely.

And it was. After hours of agony and suffering and desperation Hypermenestra held him, Egeria’s and Theomedes’ and the gods’ son, in her arms. He was covered in blood all over, drenched in it like it was his native place, the eeriest sight Hypermenestra had ever seen: death and birth contained in one tiny self. He did not cry. He was looking at her with a curiosity too old to be an infant’s, as if he was an ancient soul trapped in the newest of bodies.

Egeria got to hold him, just once. She held him and looked in his eyes and whispered an ancient prayer to him. She kissed him on his bloodied forehead and then she was dead.

Hypermenestra cleaned him up. He had the same brand his mother had had the day he was conceived: a lion, on the left side of his chest, denoting his position as a ruler not just of Akielon but of divine origin. She wrapped him in red garbs, softer than she had ever seen, and fastened the cloth with a lion pin to his chest, matching the one he’d been born with. She couldn’t look at Egeria. She turned and left, the child still in her arms like an unfamiliar object, and she found Theomedes.

She placed his son in his arms and looked at his eyes. Instantly he knew that Egeria was gone now, that he’d gained a son and lost a wife. Hypermenestra told him then, only then, of what she had witnessed Egeria do, of what his son really was. Theomedes looked down at the bundle in his arms, his newborn and unmoving child, breathing steadily and looking at him with otherworldly recognition.

“Damianos,” he whispered, “you will be Damianos.” Hypermenestra watched him.

_He who tames._


	2. Moira

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so moira stands for fate in ancient Greek, which I thought was pretty appropriate. I think I'll go between French and Greek for chapter names. Also, the Veretian gods thing is so complicated. Should I give them Gaelic Gods? I feel like that's more appropriate than most possibilities. DO enjoy!

Damianos grew up like any child would. Through the earliest months of his life he was in the care of various nurses and Hypermenestra herself as well, who was cautious but loving with him. Everyone knew now how he’d been born and why, that he was half divine, that he’d be a legend one day. But despite this he possessed no signs of his godliness, not immediately, other than his quiet and curiously docile demeanor.

Gradually it became more apparent, all Damianos’ differences. He learned to walk at a respectable age and learned to run immediately after; sometimes, as a toddler, he’d hurl toys and objects with such ferocity at his nannies he’d bruise them. However, through it all, he was still a child. He craved the comfort of a mother, one which he didn’t have, and in its absence he sought out Hypermenestra instead.

She wasn’t up to it, not at first. In the early days of his infancy she was so incredibly wary of him, this child she’d seen come into the world in blood and silence, that she did not wish to be near him for a long time afterwards. It was Kastor, in the end, who persuaded her to bond with Damianos. He'd been looking at his baby brother one day, in an official ceremony, when he'd whispered close to her ear,

“He looks very lonely, mother.” That’s when Hypermenestra had been overcome with guilt and shame and grief; for the friend she had lost and the child she’d let down. She cried in private, for a lengthy time really, contemplating why this had fallen on her; why she'd have to care for a child of divine origin,, a child who had killed her best friend, as well as why she was terrified of an infant. Then, just like Egeria had done so many years ago, she gave up her questioning.

Seasons passed. It appeared as though Damianos grew quicker with each passing month, each setting sun. He was in military training by six, on the war council next, in war encampments after. Everywhere across the land they sang songs in his honor, composed poems, kept records. Damianos, the godly prince, divine and golden and beautiful, glorious and pure and brilliant. Legend had it he could speak ten different languages, had killed his first man at three years of age, mastered the sword and bow and spear by six. Damianos, the boy who couldn’t be.

There was an ache in Hypermenestra, for the child that Damianos had never and would never get to be; for the long years where he’d bear all the legends and their weight, the road he’d lead in life full of burdens not of his own making. Yet such an innocent child Damianos was, oblivious yet to his own prowess, his own origin, his own destiny. Hypermenestra hated the idea of stripping that purity off him, of acquainting him with the Damianos of the legends, the way Theomedes and all of Akielos would have preferred it. She would not have it, not for as long as she lived.

But she did not live very long, either. She’d always been of a weak composition, even in her youth, and had known, always, that she could hope to see Kastor’s wedding but should resign to missing Damianos’. Death claimed her one winter, when Damianos had only just turned six and Kastor was about to turn sixteen. It was sudden but not painless; she knew she would die when the fever first started, and in two days she was dead. Theomedes was lost to himself with grief, now completely alone for the first time in more than half a lifetime. There was a funeral for her, a splendid funeral with pyres and games and nobility in attendance, where he sent her off for the last time.

Damianos was there, too. He was sitting right next to his father on the throne, watching the funeral pyre burning in an eerily still trance. He’d asked for Kastor to sit next to him, which had been denied, and he sat now on the dais feeling lonelier than he ever had before, garnering only a speck of comfort from the familiar feeling of being on a throne. Damianos had never had a mother and now he didn’t have Hypermenestra, either.

He was still a child, then, hadn’t yet seen war or vice or pain. He had never been hurt, physically or mentally, he had never lacked or strived for anything. Yet there, then, he was overcome by an indescribable, unfamiliar emotion; a grief of sorts, really, puzzling in its raw purity. He didn’t realize he was crying until it was pointed out to him that he should not.

The funeral went on for seven days and eight nights. Damianos was present for every ceremony, every chant, every prayer, even though he was a child barely six years old. He didn’t feel the burden of sleep and tiredness like the rest of them, he never would, but at the end of it he felt a weight pulling him down, perhaps more mental than physical. He hadn’t yet understood the gravity of his loss, why father wouldn’t smile and why Kastor wouldn’t look at him, but he felt for the first time like he was missing something essential. 

That night, after his nanny set him to bed, he found he couldn’t sleep. There was some sort of charm, smelling like the sweet honey and figs Hypermenestra had liked so much, that drew him out of bed and lulled the ache he couldn’t yet comprehend. He followed it, as if he was in a trance, through the palace corridors, and then outside, and then into the temple.

A woman set there at the altar, her feet dipped into water, looking up at the domed ceiling. As he approached, still nauseated and almost hypnotized, she lowered her slender face to look at him and smiled. Damianos noticed that her hair was shining at the tips as though it was burning, that her eyes were changing color with every blink, from comfortable brown to impossible yellow. For only a single second terror rose in him. Then he was calmed, again, by the very energy that had drawn him there; it felt right to be looking at her, warm and familiar and comforting in the oddest of sensations, cozy in ways he hadn’t known possible. Like being in the arms of Hypermenestra at night but more intense, with a stronger bond, a sharper intention. Like he’d been made for this. The closest he had ever felt to belonging, to having an origin, a mother.

As if affirming it the woman spoke, in the gentlest voice he’d ever heard, “Come, my child.” He was confused.

Damianos knew he didn’t have a mother; he knew she’d died the day he’d been born. And yet it felt impossibly right to hear the woman saying it now, calling him her child, like this was the only possible thing he would and could have yearned for. Not Nestra, not Kastor or his father, but this: this inexplicable feeling of harmony and heritage, feeling so ancient in his young mind.

Wordlessly he went to the woman. Perhaps it was the pull of the energy or perhaps his own unidentified need; he would never know what, in the years to come, even as an adult. He laid his head on her lap, just like he’d do when Nestra would tell him stories of heroes and gods and myths, and he let her stroke his head, hold his hand. It felt right, it felt just, it felt complete.

“I am your mother,” she said “I am the one who sent you here, to this mortal world. I am your only mother.”

Damianos did not reply, not once, and not because he couldn’t but because he didn’t want to.

“We have great plans for you,” she continued. She sounded like a girl then, full of wonder and anticipation and hope, like she was as young as himself. “You will be great, my son. You will be great, greater than everyone else before you.”

His head felt light and his body disproportionately heavy. The tiredness of a week of grief and of all his early years spent in unknown yearning came down on him in one forceful swing, bringing peace and acceptance and awakening with it while it forced him into a deep sleep of unnatural origin. He did not remember what he heard last before giving in.

In Damianos’ story that was the divine turning point, an end and a beginning at the same time. The end of Damianos the child, who yearned for comfort and regarded the world with childish curiosity; the beginning of Damianos the legend, filled with too old a sense of purpose for his age, now with the concrete confidence of belonging. He was six and inexplicably ancient, yet also reborn at the same time; a new creature, one foreign to this world and its people.

He kept growing and learning, with each passing age, the crafts and secrets of war. Theomedes had him training relentlessly, from morning until night, everything from swordsmanship to archery, horse racing to sailing. It never occurred to him that it was excessive, never at all. It was like he already had a longing for the arts of soldiery, as if every drop of blood in him existed only to fight, win and conquer.

Sometimes, though, he’d get lonely. Not a devastating loneliness but more the kind that would hit him in moments of sudden realization; when he watched Kastor and his friends, when he saw his father in his harem, when he noticed in a tone of finality that everyone preferred a certain amount of reverent distance from him. On those days he would go to the temple and wait for the goddess’ comfort, which came sometimes in form and sometimes in a warm wind, a plate of treats or a spectacular show of flames.

Gradually that changed, before Damianos could grasp quite how it did. He was ten, already strong enough to throw a spear and nearly as tall as Kastor, when he first met Nikandros. That year Theomedes had declared that they would hold the ancient athletic games in their lands, for the attendance and pleasure of all their neighboring princes and kingdoms. Damianos knew, however, from his special seat on the war council, that the games were really just a diplomatic approach to their most demanding military conflict: Delpha and Vere. They’d been on the brink of war for years now, even before Theomedes’ reign, tensions growing still under the guise of peace. Theomedes aimed to invite them to his kingdom in peace this way, with the ruse of brotherhood and honor, and hopefully manage an acceptable agreement between the two nations while the delegation was in their lands. A smart approach, undoubtedly, one devoid of his usual brazenness and valor.

Theomedes had also planned specifically for Damianos’ attendance in the games. He wanted to show Vere and the other princes and perhaps the whole world what his son really was, what they’d been blessed with; what, in less than ten years, an army would be faced with if they were to risk war with Akielos. It was the first time Damianos’ legend was becoming concrete; a thing not of theological imagination and hope but an irreversible addition to reality.

Damianos was taken in to train, like every other boy, brought from all across the country to the palace grounds. It was there that he met Nikandros, the son of a soldier and weaver, who’d come from the southernmost parts of the kingdom. Immediately Nikandros drew Damianos’ attention. He’d been used to boredom at that point, especially amongst his peers, which Nikandros did not echo. It was as though he too had been filled with some sort of inexplicable power, one not of godly but human origin, shining with his mortal unpredictability.

Everyone Damianos had known had treated him the same way: a blend between a blessing and a curse, a legend and a let-down, a child and a grown up at the same time. It became apparent, one day, when Nikandros asked Damianos his name, that Nikandros had no such cares. It was after they’d finished running laps; a whole noon spent doing nothing but that, which had devastated nearly all their peers. Damianos stood unfazed, glistening slightly with sweat after hours under the sun, while Nikandros was heaving for breath with a triumphant grin.

“Pass me the water?” he asked Damianos, gesturing at the jugs. Damianos stared back. No one ever asked him for anything, no one ever omitted his name and title out of a sentence.

Seeing his unresponsiveness, Nikandros huffed and made to reach for the water himself. Damianos came back to life then and took it, with unnatural speed, before Nikandros could even touch it. He kept staring at Nikandros like he was a puzzle rather than a child his own age, like he was indiscernible against all his openness.

Nikandros was angry, then, and asked with sudden fervor, “What’s your name, huh?” He snatched the water out of his hands and looked at Damianos expectantly. 

“Damianos,” he supplied, continuing his examination of Nikandros.

“Damen,” Nikandros tried out. “They call me Nik.”

Looking back later Damen knew Nikandros’ had been intentional ignorance. He’d known Damen was the prince, no doubt, he’d know what his name was. But in those days when Damen’s fate had still been uncertain, even among the gods, Nikandros’ was an important mark. Four years Damen had spent, learning to become a legend before a human, and on that day it had stopped.

They spent long days with each other after that, hunting for butterflies and chasing dogs, climbing trees and jumping down waterfalls. Damen, for the first time, acted like any young prince. He was carefree, evasive of responsibility, spoiled and lively and giddy with inexplicable joy to no end. He reveled in the normalcy, so sweet now after so many years of childhood lost, thrilling in its unfamiliarity. It wasn’t long before Damen awarded Nikandros a permanent place in the palace and in his life: as blood brother, his _philoi_ , who would share in all his joys and accomplishment and secrets. It was uncommon to take one so early; but no one would question Damianos’ choices, no one would reprimand him for brashness. Nikandros was placed permanently into the palace, in the chambers closest to Damen’s, and they shared nearly all their hours after that. Those were days of contentment and belated childhood, easy and unquestionable.

The goddess was, however, was not pleased with it. Damen's new pursuits were at first only slightly inefficient, then irresponsible, and finally quite unacceptable. She summoned him one day, with her usual sweet pull, towards the temple. Damen went to her, leaving Nikandros’ side where he’d been lying on the grass, talking in sleepy nonchalance. She’d brought him figs again, as usual, from the garden of the gods; a treat sweeter to him than anything else he had ever eaten yet deadly to any mortal who would dare consume it. He was thinking about it now as he stared at her figure, uncharacteristically tense, while he was eagerly devouring one of the purple fruits.

“You have been with a boy,” she pointed out all of a sudden, “a mortal, Nikandros. He is important to you.” 

Damen nodded at her and gulped down a mouthful of fig before enthusiastically affirming. “Yes. He is my friend.”

His only friend, really, his best friend.

But the goddess did not agree, it seemed. She did not get angry very often, not with him, but it was always noticeable. The air would thicken, as it did now, time would appear to be flowing slower and restrict his vision. Damen looked at her, fearing her for the first time.

“You are not like them, Damianos,” she said to him. She looked flushed now, yet Damen knew she had no blood in her, that she only had golden ichor. Her hair was swaying with a wind perhaps intentionally of her own making, her hands now tight on the marble of the altar she sat on. “You’re getting too close to the mortals, my son.”

Damen wondered. Was he, really? Or was he just getting further from her? He’d never paid it any close attention, not until then, the way he did now. He’d never tried to gravitate away from her, had always cherished her presence above anything and everything, but it had happened so very naturally that he felt conflicted about his own nature. He did not wish to answer her. What was he to say? He wasn’t a god, but he wasn’t human, either. Where did that put him now, a child of ten, a legendary prince and a lonely boy at the same time?

“Why don’t you call me Damen?” he asked abruptly, because of no particular reason. He did not expect an answer. She was standing now, walking towards him. There was a moment when Damen did not breathe. He thought she’d hit him, for a split second, that she’d call him ungrateful and puny and desert him, but she didn’t. He was a boy still, in her eyes, a child who could and would make mistakes, however holy he was. She caressed his cheek and sat next to him, throwing one arm around his shoulders in a protective stance.

“Never let anyone take your name from you,” she said. “It is your legacy, Damianos.”

She kissed his head and suddenly she was gone.

The games started soon after. Nikandros was the only boy their age, other than Damen, who had been selected to represent Akielos. There was uncharacteristic haste in the palace on the first day, preparing for Vaskian and Patran and Veretian delegations; slaves being assigned, silverware shined, each of the hundred marble stairs to the palace polished, readied for their arrival. Damen wasn’t concerned with anything other than the actual competition. There was a chance now to demonstrate his talents and nature for the first time; to declare, formally and finally, his divine superiority. He was regal in appearance yet anxious and expectant at the same time, feeling his mortality heavier every minute he got closer to his hour of godliness.

Damen hadn’t attended the greeting ceremony, armed with his participation in the competition as excuse. Kastor attended in his stead and Damen thought it was appropriate for the older prince to have the greater duty; Kastor, who was the splitting image of his father, if not for the absence of the defining golden lion from his shoulder. He and Nikandros were on the first event: a running competition between the youngest boys of all kingdoms, a well thought out symbol of brotherhood. They got settled into their places, oblivious in their intoxication of new glory, to their audience and the shifting gears of fate.

If Damen had gone to the greeting perhaps his fate would have changed that very day. He might have known, then, of the two brothers in the audience that day: one of whom he was destined to kill, the other to love. They watched, on that day of change, from the terraces of the pantheon. Prince Auguste, a man now at sixteen, had been sent to serve in the delegation. His brother, an unnoticing child then, sat next to him in a drowsy daze. Their golden coloring was stark against the marble of the coliseum and the darker tone of the crowd, in a cynical twist of irony maybe, denoting their foreignness both to the land and the story so slowly unfolding, one that perhaps never would have included them at all.

A loud horn blew to signal the start of the games, which shook and awakened the tiny prince. A child barely four years of age; perhaps he, out of all the spectators that day, should not have been there. Alert now and filled with intent curiosity he watched, mortal prince Laurent, as Damen readied himself.

Damen recited a short prayer dedicated to the goddess, for steady and sure victory. He knew he’d win, his conviction strengthened with years of waiting and wanting, yet he found childish comfort in it all the same. He did not have a mother to throw him laurels and bay leaves; but he had the goddess and her warm winds, churning around him now, cheering him on in her parental vehemence. He turned his eyes at the sun, observing with primal greed like it was his property, as he absentmindedly stretched his legs out. His eyes lowered gradually and came to rest on the terraces where sun-like light was still shining, reflecting a golden aura, around two distinct figures. How peculiar, Damen thought to himself, what light coloring. From the corner of his eye he saw the tiny prince and paid him no regard, turned ahead to face his challenge.

"Are you ready?" Nikandros asked him, rubbing his knees and stretching his legs. Damen smiled at him, a cheeky grin befitting a child and not a god, while he fastened his running sandals in practiced ease.

"Yes," he said, "of course I am." How could he not be? He asked on second thought, "Are you?" as he watched Nikandros nervously stretch his arms, shift his legs, jump once on the ground as if to ascertain it would  hold.

Nikandros looked at him then. There was a moment when neither talked and then Nikandros smiled, too, easily and naturally. "Yes," he said back at Damen, "I'm ready now." They took their places, still staring at each other from the corners of their eyes, as if reassuring each other of their mutual existence. 

The horn blew again and then they were off.

Sure enough, Damen won that day. He sped by so quickly and so powerfully he was almost a blur, an unfathomable sight, everything he’d been promised to be ten long years ago. His father placed a golden laurel wreath on his head and wrapped him in his red cloak, fastened in familiar fashion to his chest by the royal lion pin. Kastor watched at Theomedes’ back and Nikandros on Damianos’ side, all eternally ignorant of the tear in destiny’s fabric and the casting of godly dice.

Prince Auguste watched, too, intently until the very end; watched even Damianos’ crowning and his moment of glory.

He considered, for a moment, the grace he’d witnessed from Damianos. He wondered whether there might be truth in the stories and songs, whether they’d been brought there precisely to wonder this. He gathered his brother in his arms, mind racing with politics while his arms accommodated Laurent’s body. There was a sudden clatter behind him, caused by a shift of the guards, as someone else entered their terrace. His uncle walked towards him and made an instinctive dive towards Laurent, taking his sleeping form from Auguste’s arms to tuck him neatly into his own. Auguste gave him a nod of unknowing gratitude; a nod at the uncle he thought loyal and loving and caring, even now taking care of the two of them.

The shift was over now. Fate was set in stone in that single second.

Two weeks later, at the end of the games, the Princes of Vere left as lightly as they had come. Auguste, now having witnessed the miracle of Damianos himself, that unearthly grace and power and speed, had been eager even more than before for peace to be settled. Vere had its own gods, native to their own lands, but Auguste did not have to know their religion to know Damianos was blessed. There were many years yet for the boy to be a threat, five at least and perhaps more, but he had seen enough in that one demonstration to know Akielos was favored by something of divine origin. His father would never understand if he was told, not before seeing Damianos and his impossible feats, but Auguste never told him of it in his letters. The treaty was signed, only one day prior to their leave, to guarantee a tentative stalemate between the two nations. Ten years, both sides agreed, ten years of unquestioned peace.

Leaving Ios Prince Auguste did not know that fate decreed it would be his last time seeing it. He left with a lighter heart than he’d arrived with, perhaps even with substantial admiration. Prince Laurent, on the other hand, would not remember much at all about his first visit to Akielos. His most distinct memory left from those days, in a pointless and curious clarity, would be climbing the hundred stairs leading to the palace in a breathless frenzy; unaware totally of the names etched into them, one for every ancient hero, which had not seemed to matter at the time. Heroes were abundant in his world then, in his story books and under the watchful eyes of his brother. What he’d remember was not the heritage of the marble but its color, pinkish yellow, more intriguing to him than anything else in the hills of Ios.

Theomedes’ games were one of those ripples in destiny; those unfathomable discrepancies only Fate herself could control, invulnerable even to godly intervention. A parting of ways, an end to familiar days, a beginning for new paths. No one knew then, not even the goddess herself, what had shifted in Damianos’ fate.

And that was how their story started.


End file.
